If you are a budding author, and sometimes despair over your work, you might be interested in an old diary entry that I found this morning when I was cleaning out the junk room. (It’s wet, windy and bitterly cold outside.) It’s from July 2006:

Diary entry 2006

‘Having finished (more or less) the second draft of the Museum novel, I am completely unsure that I can ever turn it into the compact book that I want it to be. My confidence has all slipped away, and consequently I want to work and work on it to try and batter it into shape. Instead I shall let it lie for a while.’

You see, when you’re in the middle of writing a book, you never know where it might take you. I remember regular bouts of despair over Museum of Thieves. At that stage I could never have imagined how well it would be received.

So keep writing. Trust your instincts. Don’t give up.

And keep a diary, so that you can look back in a few years and see how far you have come.